'Concur, Commander,' Ilse said.
'Very well…Oceanographer.' Jeffrey smiled, then turned back to Meltzer. 'Let's call home and then get moving.'
Clayton came into the forward compartment and stood next to Ilse. 'I can't sit still,' he said. 'I came to watch.'
'Post-action heebie-jeebies?' Jeffrey asked. His hand was firmly on the joy stick, his course following an underwater cable he could see on the low-frequency syntheticaperture bottom-penetrating sonar.
'Yeah,' Clayton said. 'The adrenaline's worn off.' Jeffrey nodded. He understood. At least driving the ASDS gave him something to do. It would all catch up with him later, Jeffrey was sure. He thought of coming back sometime to tap this cable.
'I feel pretty spaced-out myself,' Ilse said.
'We can all relax once we get back aboard,' Jeffrey said. 'Have a good shot of medicinal brandy, take a snooze, we'll be good as new.'
'I guess,' Clayton said. 'I wish I could say that for all my guys.'
'I know what you mean,' Jeffrey said. 'How you makin' out right now?'
'You know,' Clayton said, 'it's strange. I thought I'd be real down but I got over that part fast. I feel much older suddenly. I feel, I guess, I don't know, kind of seasoned. It's not entirely a bad feeling.'
'It's like they used to say in another war,' Jeffrey said. 'You've seen the elephant and changed forever.'
'Did this happen to you, Commander?' Clayton said. 'Back in the Persian Gulf?'
'I wish. By the time they cut down the drugs enough for me to have coherent thoughts, I was in the orthopedic ward at Bethesda.'
'Did you lose anybody on that mission?' Clayton said.
'No.' Then Jeffrey reminded himself: I did — my fiancee. 'One guy was paralyzed, though. From the waist down. Too much damage for any nerve reconstruction.'
'That's a shame,' Clayton said.
'Not entirely,' Jeffrey said. 'He's won three gold medals in Special Olympics, the international ones, the big time. He's a high school principal now and also runs a Boy Scout troop.'
'Watch out for an ex-SEAL in a wheelchair,' Clayton said. He smiled, but Jeffrey sensed his pain.
'Look,' Jeffrey said. 'Command is never easy, Shaj. In war you tell people to do things, they get hurt, they die. It sucks but life goes on.'
'I guess you're right,' Clayton said.
'You brought six people back, out of nine,' Jeffrey said. 'For a mission they gave odds of one in four, that's real good work.'
'There're just so many things I'd have done differently, if I'd only known.'
'Don't second-guess yourself,' Jeffrey said. 'Combat's total chaos. It doesn't pay to overanalyze it afterward, ever. Trust me on that.'
Clayton hesitated. 'Thanks, Commander.' He took a deep breath. 'I'm gonna go in back and be with my people. Maybe we'll say a little prayer for the ones that didn't make it.'
'Let's all do that right now,' Jeffrey said. 'It just seemed too creepy while SEAL One was still alive.' Jeffrey flicked on the intercom into the transport compartment. 'Just a brief devotion, guys, to give us closure.' SEALs Seven and Eight came to stand in the control compartment hatchway.
Jeffrey cleared his throat. 'Uh…Our Creator, we commend to You the souls of our departed comrades.
Watch over us as we harness the forces of nature in Thy bidding, and guide us on the path to a just peace.' Everybody said Amen.
OUTSIDE THE BLUFF AT DURBAN
Gunther Van Gelder practically screamed into the intercom. 'What do you mean you can't open the outer door?'
'We're under attack,' a metallic voice answered, sounding young and very scared.
'Christ, man,' Van Gelder shouted, 'that's why the interlocking has two sets of barriers!
You open the outer blast door and let people in, then close it and open the inner one!
That's how the goddamn thing's supposed to work!'
'I don't know, sir, it halves the protection.'
'Look, you,' Van Gelder said. 'It's been more than half an hour and there was just that one explosion, a low-yield groundburst fifteen klicks away. It could simply be an accident, for all we know. If this was a real attack, there'd have been more missiles, they'd try to saturate our defenses. I haven't seen one AA battery open fire — there aren't any targets for them!'
'How, how do I know you're telling the truth?'
'You don't,' Van Gelder said. He coughed and cleared his mouth of grit and dust. 'But you know I'm still alive and breathing, right? So you have a choice. You can keep the blast door closed and hope Durban gets nuked so I get blown to ashes. If you fail to open this door immediately and Durban does not get nuked, I will personally blow your ass off once the all-clear sounds. The other choice is opening the door, in which case I'll be far more interested in rejoining my ship than putting you on report for stupidity and cowardice. Which I will do if you don't open this bloody door!' The hydraulic mechanism began to whine, and the massive slab swung toward Van Gelder.
ABOARD CHALLENGER
'Docking solid,' Jeffrey said into the ASDS intercom.
'Roger,' COB's voice answered, 'Challenger confirms a solid dock. Ocean Interface conformal doors are closing now.'
'Acknowledged,' Jeffrey said. He watched the little status presentation on the LCD as the pressure doors swung closed over the ASDS icon.
'Doors closed,' COB said two minutes later. 'Hangar bay still wet, hangar internal pressure relieved.'
'Confirmed,' Jeffrey said. 'ASDS seawater gauges read as on the surface. Decompression sequence for repetitive group F dive table is completed, ASDS internal air pressure reads as on the surface.'
'Commander,' Meltzer said, 'our radiacs and dosimeters all show inside normal tolerances.'
'Very well, Copilot,' Jeffrey said. 'Challenger, radiology is satisfactory, no measurable on-board contamination, no personnel exposures of concern at this time.'
'Acknowledged,' COB said. 'ASDS, you are cleared to open your lower hatch.'
'Very well, Challenger,' Jeffrey said, 'we are opening our lower hatch.' Jeffrey flicked some switches, then unbuckled and stood up. He stretched, as much as was possible for his tall figure in the cramped confines. He and Ilse and Meltzer went into the central airlock chamber, and Clayton and the SEALs joined them there. Jeffrey knelt and spun the wheel. He let the door drop open.
There was a small crowd waiting at the base of the ladder, including Challenger's senior medical corpsman and several ASDS maintenance specialists. Jeffrey saw Commodore Morse's bearded face look up at him.
'Scratch one bioweapons lab,' Jeffrey said. 'Three SEALs KIA, and we took a prisoner.' Half an hour later Jeffrey and Ilse walked together toward the CACC.
'It's amazing what a shower and a change of clothes can do for your perspective,' Ilse said.
Jeffrey laughed. 'That plus a swig of Wild Turkey and a strong cuppa coffee works every time.'
'Thanks again for saving my life,' Ilse said.
'Aw, shucks, it was nothing.'
'I'll share a second-stage regulator with you anytime, Mr. Fuller.' Just then they reached the control room. Captain Wilson turned. 'Welcome back,' he said. Jeffrey quickly took reports from Monaghan and Sessions, then reclaimed his role as fire control coordinator. Lieutenant Monaghan returned to being navigator, and Ilse took a seat
